


Plans

by jesse_panic



Category: Tales of Vesperia
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Cute, Emotions, Flashback, Gen, guild
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-26
Updated: 2012-04-26
Packaged: 2017-11-04 08:09:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/391652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesse_panic/pseuds/jesse_panic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Karol finalises the documentation to make Brave Vesperia an official guild, Raven's mind drifts to his past- or pasts- as he worries about the future. Set after the Tales of Vesperia game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Plans

Raven’s eyes unfocused, his mind drifting out of the breezy Union corridor and away from Brave Vesperia’s fluttering banner. He could feel the thick woven mat beneath his crossed legs, but the sensation faded to almost nothing as he let his thoughts wander, until it felt as remote as if it were occurring in a dream. In his hazy meditation he wandered through the recesses of his own mind, drifting as if in miasma. And he thought about the past.

 

Heh, the past. Old Raven didn’t really _have_ a past. Well, that wasn’t true; he had grown up in the slums of Mantaic- not an orphan per se- but with parents busy enough putting food on the table for him to have to take care of himself as much as possible. He only really saw them when the sun set and he came back home for a bed and an evening meal. Not that he resented that, of course; that was just how fabric traders had to work. He could see them now; his father at the loom, then the dying barrels, chatting with his uncle as he stirred the exotic-smelling liquids with a wooden punt made tar black at the end from the different barrels. The newly-coloured cloths would crackle in the hot dry winds of the day on the rope line, before being brought down and folded and packed onto the cart for his mother to take away to market. He could see the cart- listing awkwardly through the sand due to that one loose wheel his uncle never quite got round to fixing- and hear his mother’s strident calls out into the urban maze he called school, home and playground. He could taste the spices in the air, see his sisters running ahead of him through the streets and feel the stitch in his side as he giddily kept pace (they never made allowance for the fact that he was the youngest!) He could remember his first pineapple curry (and the spitting out thereof) and his first kiss. He could even remember pestering the emissaries of Fortune’s Market for stories, and the vow he made to one day travel to that industrial hive they called Dahngrest and seek _his_ fortune…

 

But that was the problem. He could remember people, and places, and treasured moments; but he could not remember mundanity. He had no memories of just sitting on a step, on a completely ordinary day, and noticing the face of a stranger. No memories of waiting for friends and watching a bug cross his path to pass the time, no memories of greeting acquaintences. No familiar faces that he didn’t absolutely need to have a past, no life beyond the barest bones of one. And he… didn’t like to think about that.

 

At least he had it better than Schwann. Schwann’s past was little more than a cover story for a man with no sense of belonging outside of his profession. Sure, he had had memories, detailed, and complex as they were, but they did not resonate with the man. Try as he might, he could not reconcile the knight the he was with the child that he had been. On some levels, it must have pained him, but Schwann was a deeply private man even towards himself so he buried those feelings behind his veneer of control and went on with his life. For all his talk of duty and battle-glory, Raven knew that he had died a deeply unhappy man.

 

Damuron had had a past. Damuron had mundane remembrances, pointless childhood knowledge, a gallery of faces he didn’t need to know. But Damuron had taken those to the grave.

 

Raven found himself thinking about Damuron more and more recently. He didn’t know why, but he had developed a kind of fascination with the man. Obviously he hadn’t known him when he was alive, but he had still left an imprint on Raven. He couldn’t know his thoughts, but he knew the man as he would a deceased friend; odd little facts and summations of an outsider, but a close one. He had a pretty clear idea of what Damuron had wanted in life.

 

Raven cast his mind back to what was now a familiar question; where would Damuron be now if he was still alive? He smiled to himself: he’d be married, definitely. Not to Casey; this wasn’t Damuron’s fantasy but Raven’s guess at his reality. He could see his wife now- a friendly-looking woman with zeal about her- who others would not quite describe as beautiful but who was stunning in his eyes. Probably another soldier, she kept her job after they married, but by now she’d have been promoted off the front line. He’d like that; give him some peace of mind as he tucked the kids in at night. Oh, they’d have more than one, three or four maybe. It wouldn’t matter to them what gender they were so Raven wasted no time dwelling on that, but he could see the rag-tag group of them running up to their parents and embracing them after a long hard day at work. Damuron, now a captain due to his heroism in the Great War, would sling off his uniform and scoop up his giggling children in both arms, his smile bright enough to illuminate their dusky hallway. Behind him, his wife- always the more professional of the two- remains in her militaristic mind a moment longer, before relenting and tousling the children’s hair as she makes her way to their garden. Together, they play with their children, separating spats between the eldest and picking up the youngest should the others run off and leave them crawling after. Supper would be a group affair, and therefore a messy one, but it tasted all the sweeter for the effort they put in. Afterwards, they would retire to their living room, where they would sit and tell stories until heads started to droop against tiny chests and it was time for bed.

 

Raven grinned to himself: Damuron would’ve been alright. He sometimes thought it strange how this brought him comfort rather than sadness, but after all the time that had passed he felt he was beyond mourning for this man he did not know. Instead, he felt free to bask in the happy wanderings of what might have been. This was one of the reasons why Raven preferred Damuron to Schwann; for Schwann lived in the present. He had no dreams for the future other than the continuation of what he had now. And that didn’t make any sense; he was miserable when he wasn’t working, so why would he wish for nothing to change? The man frustrated Raven so. At least when Raven had hated his life, and the grip that Schwann and Alexei had had over it, he had had the good sense to wish for death. Huh, now’s that’s irony; Raven was the only one who didn’t dream of the future, and now he was the only one left.

 

So what _did_ he want, now that life was worth living? He couldn’t help but cast his mind back to Damuron’s wish. Well, there’s no denying that looked pretty good, but he couldn’t really have that. He didn’t have the stable job which would allow for the big country house. He was a charmer, sure, but he hadn’t really made a connection that like with anyone in… almost a decade, so no beautiful partner for him, and that meant no brood of unruly youngsters. Besides, he was getting a bit too long in the tooth to be going around fathering kids. Could he imagine himself with a baby? He spluttered aloud at the thought, but as he thought about it more seriously, he realised there was no way he could build that sort of life for himself. It wasn’t because of his responsibilities to the guild- far from it- but because in order to live that proper, ordered, normal correct life; you needed to be a proper person. And Raven wasn’t. He never would be, because he didn’t have a past, a real history, a real life. He didn’t even have a surname, for godssakes; he was little more than an imagined person pushed into reality half-formed.

 

“Ra _ven!_ ” A loud impatient shout brought him back to earth.

 

“Huh? What?” he shook himself, opening his eyes blearily. He hadn’t even realised they’d been closed.

 

“Raven, the official from Altosk is here! You need to wake up so you can sign the records!” Karol pushed at his back impatiently, willing him to stand up and greet the red-robed man in front of them.

 

“Alright alright, easy now! That’s no way to treat a tired old man.” Slowly, Raven got to his feet, hiding his grin from Karol. No matter what happened, he’d always have the kid, and for that he was beyond grateful. He steadied himself on Karol’s shoulder, then turned to face the young gentleman in front of them. “Hiya, Raven here.” He extended a hand to the gentleman, who shook it tentatively. “And whilst I’m more than happy to help, doesn’t this young man need to sign ‘em first?” he nodded towards Karol.

 

“I already did, whilst you were napping!” said Karol, taking the papers from the bewildered official and shoving them under Raven’s nose, his pride in his handiwork making him too enthusiastic to sound angry. “Look, Yuri signed them too when we sent them to Flynn’s place!”

 

Raven took the papers and cast a practiced eye over them. ‘ _Guild Name_ : Brave Vesperia’ written in Karol’s heavily accented hand. It looked like he put all his weight on the pen. ‘ _Founder_ : Karol Capel.’ In the same carefully etched attempted neatness. ‘ _Second:_ Yuri Lowell.’ He hadn’t expected Yuri’s handwriting to be as neat and elegant as it was, but there you go. Both of them had signed under their names, and Karol had written a declaration of the guild’s status and a record of the jobs they had undertaken before today, which he had also signed. Ah, and here was where Raven was meant to put his mark. ‘Noted Signatory’ and a space for his name, his surname, and what it was that made him so noted. Raven stopped dead. A surname. He wasn’t even enough of a person to complete this form. He was gonna let the kid down. He couldn’t imagine the embarrassment when he’d have to hand the forms back and ask for someone else to sign in his place. And Karol had worked so hard to get them a witness for the guild’s official opening. He couldn’t do this, not to Karol, he—

 

“ _Idiot._ ” Raven muttered under his breath, shaking his head to himself as he wrote carefully on the forms, before double-checking them and handing them back to Karol with a twinkle in his eye. “There. All in order, boss?”

 

Karol double-checked the forms, his head moving from left to right as he carefully scanned the document. Raven and the official watched on. Seemingly out of nowhere, Karol let out a gasp of surprise, but then clapped a hand over his mouth, steadied himself and finished reading, before handing the papers back to the official and saying, “yes, all in order” in his most grown-up voice. The official scanned them once, raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.

 

“Congratulations then,” he said, “Brave Vesperia is now a registered guild.”

 

They thanked him and made their way towards the exit, silent for a while.

 

“D’you, d’you really mean it?” Karol had spluttered after they were some distance away from the official.

 

“Of course!” said Raven cheerily, taking his hand from Karol’s to ruffle the boy’s hair affectionately. “I only wish I had thought to clear it with you first. I hope ya don’t mind.”

 

“N-no! Of course I don’t mind!” said Karol, more stunned than anything. He walked along in silence for a while, glancing up at Raven, as if to check he was really there. Then, suddenly, he let out a great cheer of joy. Raven laughed, not caring at all that they hadn’t yet left the Guild Headquarters, and scooped him up onto his shoulders. He didn’t need to worry about the future, it was gonna be just fine.

 

After the two strange-looking travellers thanked him, the Altosk official watched them leave, hand-in-hand. The sun was setting, and he had little else to do until Altosk closed, so he stood in the hallway, letting a faint breeze catch him, listening to the sound of their voices. When they were some distance away the child let out a great whoop and the man, laughing, put him on his shoulders. Grinning, the official re-read the newest part of the document.

 

‘ _Position of Noted Signatory_ : former vizier of Don Whitehorse.’

 

‘ _Noted Signatory_ : Raven Capel. (signed.)’


End file.
